


As the ground keeps shifting

by Iwillgladlyjointhefight



Series: My eyes on you [4]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Depression, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 08:18:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12477284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iwillgladlyjointhefight/pseuds/Iwillgladlyjointhefight
Summary: Some nights, Alexander loses pieces of himself to the battle within. But everytime, John is there.





	As the ground keeps shifting

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone!
> 
> By now, you know how this works. I feel things, I use Alex to make sense of it all.  
> Mostly, I want to thank my friends for being the John to my Alex. Thank you. Here's to always getting back up in the morning.

John really needed to pee. 

It was 3 am, he hadn’t really slept so much as dozed. Lafayette had come over to the apartment until late - George was meeting with generals - and they’d had a drink too much, not that they had counted. Hercules had ended up tossing his shirt by the window, enthusiastically followed by Peggy doing the same, which she didn’t much care about since most of her shirts were Hercules’ anyway. Lafayette had had to be chased out of the apartment by Agent Bob once he’d started telling them dirty secrets about the British Prime Minister. And Alexander…

Alex hadn’t had anything to drink.

He’d said he didn’t feel like it, which was fine, of course. It had never stopped them from having a good time. John had kissed his lips, his breath fire from the whiskey, and hadn’t given it much thought. Actually, he hadn’t thought much at all.

 

Anyway, John really needed to pee and could Alex just let him…

Actually, Alex  _ was  _ letting him. His legs weren’t tangled with his, his arms weren’t ensnaring him in a warm, too warm cocoon, pillows laying aside and traded for the comfort of John’s steadily rising chest and the staccato rhythm of his heartbeat. No, Alex was not his usual octopus self.

John stretched his arm gently, feeling around for his fiancé. His handmade contact with soft, hot skin. He heard a small whimper.

 

His first instinct, hard to beat, was to spring up and scoop Alex in his arms before bringing him to the bathroom, running him a bath and waiting for the storm to end. But he didn’t. He had, once. Alexander hadn’t liked it at all, he had felt taken for a child, his hackles raised from too much, too quick, too sensitive, and he had shut down faster than John could have expected. 

Now, John waited, his hand feather-light on Alex’s side. He could see Alex’s back turned to him, the man small and a dark shadow against the white drywall. He counted sixty long seconds in his head, feeling Alex’s erratic breath, his caught-up sobs getting louder by the minute but never louder than a sleepy moan would be. John was so finely tuned to his lover, he could have written books about the noises he made in his sleep and in his wake.

“Alex?” John tried to make his voice soft, neutral. Not to make Alex feel caught like a deer in headlights, but enough to make him understand he had heard and he was there now, and he cared and would wait as long as he had to. 

There was still silence on Alex’s part, but the shuddery breaths were louder, meaning he was not hiding anymore. John would take the small victories he could.

“What’s going on, love?”

Alex let out a gut-wrenching sob. John’s hand slid slowly across his stomach as Alex turned and faced him. “I don’t know,” he whispered. His eyes were puffy and shiny with tears in the moonlight, nose stuffy, his hair stuck to his forehead in erratic strands, chest caving in like he had been hit; and John had never loved him more desperately than at this moment.

It happened, sometimes. Alex would wake up feeling good, and for no particular reason, his mood shifted during the day. From his usual hard-working and talkative self would rise the ghost of a scared and lonely child, and by the time the dam broke, he would just be an empty shell ready to be flooded by dark memories and angry doubts. It had taken a moment to adapt, but mostly John was happy he could be there for Alex in those moments. Alex had told him tales of difficult nights, alone in his dorm room, alone with the past and the future, and nothing to hang on to the present but the pain of knocking his head against the wall to ground himself. 

“Wanna hide?” John said, his hand still on Alex, but arranging his body so that his fiancé could, if he so wished, nestle into his arms. Which Alex did, rolling over with a shudder, his face flush against John’s heated chest, the wet tracks on his cheek sticky and cold. His breath was hot, his clammy hands gripping John’s waist like a vise. John’s hands found their way to his hair, tangling themselves in the dark locks, a light constant tug, enough to remind Alex not to fly away. 

 

They didn’t speak. Sometimes, words are useless. You just need to be held through the hard-blowing wind of your thoughts. Alex never knew where the thoughts came from - oh, he knew what they were, he knew their deformed shape, their coppery taste and their icy and familiar touch as they made their way up his spine until he drowned. He knew he should, in truth, get someone to help get rid of them. 

But there was a certain comfort in falling. 

He still expected the hard impact of the ground below him. What he didn’t expect was John. 

Whenever he hadn’t been alone in those moments, the other guy or girl had tried to keep him from falling. Which had made, actually, all other falls worse.

Not John.

John didn’t try to soften the blow at all. John fell with him. John stayed there, holding him. He rode it out, didn’t ask for an explanation. 

And he was there to pick up the pieces.

Alex wasn’t whole. But at least, he didn’t leave pieces everywhere anymore.

 

They stayed like that for a long while, John trying his best to help Alexander sync his breath with his. Every time Alex sobbed, he died a little inside; everytime Alex tightened his grip, he held him closer, shielding him from the world and the light. He knew all too well that sometimes you need to wallow, sometimes you need to feel to the full extent of your self-loathing. But let it be known, Alex would never again have to hide his tears again.

By the time John couldn’t hold it in anymore and had to get up for a bathroom break, Alex was asleep.

 

When Alexander woke him up with a kiss in the morning, they were holding to the ground again.


End file.
